Ukraine war: Kyiv’s drones hit Putin’s bombers deep inside Russian soil

Germany’s chief of defence has warned that Nato must brace for an attack from Russia in four years or even sooner as Moscow builds up its forces “to an enormous extent”.

General Carsten Breuer said Russia was a “very serious threat” to Nato at the moment.

General Breuer said Russia was building about 1,500 main battle tanks every year, as well as 4 million rounds of 155 millimetre ammunition, some of which was going in military stockpiles “facing the west”.

The general said it was “clear that there’s an intention” from Russia to expand its offensive elsewhere.

“So we have to be ready by 2029 up to then, we have to speed up in Nato,” he said.

“If you ask me now, is this a guarantee that’s not earlier than 2029 I would say, No, it’s not. So we must be able to fight tonight, and for this fight tonight … we are ready.”

Donald Trump was not given a heads-up about Ukraine’s unprecedented drone strikes that took out a huge fleet of Russian planes on Sunday, according to reports.

Ukraine’s “large-scale” drone attack, launched deep into Russian territory and which wiped out 40 bombers, took more than 18 months to plan and was personally supervised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, both Ukrainian and U.S. officials told Axios.

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A major Ukrainian drone attack has destroyed more than 40 Russian planes deep in Russia’s territory, Ukraine’s Security Service said yesterday.

The drones hit 41 planes stationed at military airfields on Sunday afternoon, including A-50, Tu-95 and Tu-22M aircraft, the official said.

Moscow has previously used Tupolev Tu-95 and Tu-22 long-range bombers to launch missiles at Ukraine, while A-50s are used to coordinate targets and detect air defences and guided missiles.

The Security Service of Ukraine said that the operation, which it codenamed “spider web”, had destroyed 34 percent of Russia’s fleet of air missile carriers with damages estimated at $7bn.

The claim could not be independently verified.

Russia’s defence ministry in a statement confirmed the attacks, which damaged aircraft and sparked fires on air bases in the Irkutsk region, more than 4,000km (2,500 miles) from Ukraine, as well as the Murmansk region in the north, it said.

Strikes were also repelled in the Amur region in Russia’s Far East and in the western regions of Ivanovo and Ryazan, the ministry said.

Asian shares sank this morning and oil prices jumped as trade tensions and the Russian-Ukraine conflict ratcheted up geopolitical uncertainty.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng plunged more than 2 per cent as Beijing and Washington traded harsh words over trade. US president Donald Trump’s announcement that he will double tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50 per cent layered on still more worries for investors.

A report over the weekend that China’s factory activity contracted in May, although the decline slowed from April as the country reached a deal with the US to slash president Donald Trump’s sky-high tariffs, further undermined market sentiment.

Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul will present to the Russian side a proposed roadmap for reaching a lasting peace settlement, according to a copy of the document seen by Reuters.

According to the document, there will be no restrictions on Ukraine’s military strength after a peace deal is struck, no international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine taken by Moscow’s forces, and reparations for Ukraine.

The document also states that the current location of the frontline will be the starting point for negotiations about territory.

Russia currently controls a little under one fifth of Ukraine, or about 113,100 square km, about the same size as the US state of Ohio.

Mr Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops to invade Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. The United States says over 1.2 million people have been killed and injured in the war since 2022.

Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that Ukraine’s operation against Russian airfields struck one third of the strategic cruise missile carriers stationed at air bases.

“Today, a brilliant operation was carried out. The preparation took over a year and a half,” he wrote on X alongside his Sunday evening address.

“What’s most interesting, is that the ‘office’ of our operation on Russian territory was located directly next to FSB headquarters in one of their regions.

“In total, 117 drones were used in the operation with a corresponding number of drone operators involved. 34% of the strategic cruise missile carriers stationed at air bases were hit. We will continue this work.”

Russian and Ukrainian officials are due to sit down today in the Turkish city of Istanbul for their second round of direct peace talks since 2022, but the two sides are still far apart on how to end the war and the fighting is stepping up.

The Russian delegation will be headed by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who after the first round invoked French general and statesman Napoleon Bonaparte to assert that war and negotiations should always be conducted at the same time.

After keeping the world guessing on whether Ukraine would even turn up for the second round, president Volodymyr Zelensky said defence minister Rustem Umerov would meet with Russian officials in Istanbul.

The first round of talks on 16 May yielded the biggest prisoner swap of the war but no sign of peace – or even a ceasefire as both sides merely set out their own opening negotiating positions.

US president Donald Trump has demanded Russia and Ukraine make peace, but so far they have not and the White House has repeatedly warned the United States will “walk away” from the war if the two sides are too stubborn to reach a peace deal.

Ukraine’s overnight drone attacks on Russia’s Kursk and Voronezh regions sparked residential fires and disrupted traffic on a major highway, regional officials said early this morning.

Russian air defence units destroyed a total of 162 Ukrainian drones overnight, downing 57 of the air weapons over the Kursk region that borders Ukraine.

Falling debris from destroyed drones in the Kursk region sparked fires at several houses and damaged private apartments, said acting governor Alexander Khinshtein.

In the southern Russian region of Voronezh, where Russian air units destroyed 16 Ukrainian drones, regional governor Alexander Gusev said drone debris cut through power lines which fell on the M-4, a major expressway.

A small section of the highway, which links the cities of Moscow, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar, was closed, Mr Gusev said. Falling drone debris also damaged the facade of several houses, he added on Telegram.

There were no injuries reported, the governors of the regions said.

The attacks come as both Russia and Ukraine are about to meet for a round of peace talks, trying to find a way to end the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion on its smaller neighbour more than three years ago.

At least seven people were killed and 30 hospitalised after “illegal interference” caused a bridge to collapse and a train to derail in Russia’s Bryansk region that borders Ukraine, Russian authorities said yesterday.

The train’s locomotive and several cars derailed “due to the collapse of a span structure of the road bridge as a result of an illegal interference in the operation of transport”, Russian Railways said on Telegram.

Two children were among those hospitalised, one of them in a serious condition, according to Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of Bryansk.

Among those killed was the locomotive driver, Russia’s state news agencies reported, citing medics. Russia’s ministry of emergency situations said its main efforts were aimed at finding and rescuing victims and that some 180 personnel were involved in the operation.

Russia’s Baza Telegram channel, which often publishes information from sources in the security services and law enforcement, reported without providing evidence that the bridge was blown up.

Since the start of the war that Russia launched more than three years ago, there have been continued cross-border shelling, drone strikes, and covert raids from Ukraine into the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions that border Ukraine.

The train was going from the town of Klimovo to Moscow, Russian Railways said. It collided with the collapsed bridge in the area of a federal highway in the Vygonichskyi district of the Bryansk region.The district lies some 100km from the border with Ukraine.

Russia launched at least 472 drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s air force said yesterday, the highest nightly total of the war so far.

The air force said in a statement that Russia had also launched seven missiles.

It added that 382 of the drones were shot down or otherwise neutralised, along with three of the missiles.

Russia has recently stepped up the amount of drones it launches at Ukraine in its regular nightly barrages.